Customer Reviews

The Joke

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading several books by Kundera -one of my favorite authors-, I decided to try his first novel, "The Joke". Because it's the first one, its natural that the style would differ from his latest production...however, the author is the same and the style is similar in all of his work, he explores human thoughts and emotions beautifully, maybe not in a such profound way like Dostoievsky or Hesse, but close enough to be in the same league.

If you want a detail of the plot (I personally don't like to do that before reading a book), you will probably find that in other reviews, I'll just said that the story is about a man that lost all of his achievements just for a misunderstanding, a joke that was not well received in a communism society. Kundera explores the thoughts of this man (in several time periods of his life), but also takes other characters and gives them a protagonic level (the story is written in first person, in the view of all of the characters). The book gets more and more interesting as it develops, and the climax is at the end, the last 50 pages are brilliant. A dramatic story with a great end.

Five stars for the way Kundera allow readers to get to know and love his characters.....brilliant narrative, brilliant book.

A joke's a very serious thing."

So said the 18th-century English poet Charles Churchill in "The Ghost". And a silly joke was a very serious thing for Ludvik, the protagonist of Milan Kundera's first novel "The Joke."

Written and set in 1965 Prague and first published in Czechoslovakia in 1967, the novel opens with Ludvik looking back on the joke that changed his life in the early 1950s. Ludvik was a dashing, witty, and popular student. Like most of his friends he was an enthusiastic supporter of the still-fresh Communist regime in post-World War II Czechoslovakia. In a playful mood he writes a postcard to one of the girls in his class during their summer break. Since she seems, according to Ludvik, to be a bit too serious he writes on the postcard "Optimism is the opium of the people! The healthy atmosphere stinks! Long live Trotsky!" His colleagues and fellow young-party leaders did not quite see the humor in the sentiment expressed in the postcard. Ludvik finds himself expelled from the party and college and drafted to that part of the Czech military where alleged subversives form work brigades and spend the next few years working in mines.

Despite the interruption in his career Ludvik has become a successful scientist. But despite his success, his treatment at the hands of his former friends has left him bitter and angry. An opportunity arises when he meets Helena, an old friend now married to Pavel, the friend who led the efforts to purge Ludvik from the party. Ludvik decides to seduce Helena as a means of exacting his revenge. In essence this is the second `joke' of the novel. Although the seduction is successful things do not quite play out the way Ludvik expects, the novel's third joke' and he is left once more to sit and think bitter thoughts. Ultimately he decides that these sorts of jokes and their bitter repercussions are not the fault of the humans who set them in motion but are really just a matter of historic inevitability. Ultimately then one cannot blame forces that cannot be changed or altered.

Written in Czech (before Kundera left for France where he began writing in French) this is one of Kundera's more accessible works. The book is narrated through the voices of four people, Ludvik, Helena, Kostka, who has since become a Christian and absented himself from the commercial and political life of the regime, and Jaroslav whose love of traditional Czech folk music forms a nice counterpoint to life in 1960s Czechoslovakia. Kundera switches seamlessly from one voice to the next even as the changes in voice become more frequent towards the novel's conclusion. Although Ludvik is a bit self-absorbed that self-absorption is not nearly as all-consuming as one sees in the characters in Kundera's more recent efforts.

A word about the translation. There is an old French expression: "translations are like women - if they are beautiful, they are not faithful; if they are faithful they are not beautiful." This edition is designated by the publisher as the `definitive' translation. Kundera has expressed no small amount of dissatisfaction with earlier translations of this work and Kundera spent a lot of time working with the translator to ensure that the voice heard in the English version corresponds to the voice heard in the original Czech. Each reader may have a different opinion as to the beauty of the translated prose (I think it reads very well) but I think that given Kundera's blessing that it is, at the very least, faithful.

L. Fleisig

At the end of the French edition I have there is a short comment of the author about the history of The Joke, including its interdiction in Czechoslovakia and the bad translations it had to go through afterwards. And finally, Kundera seems to feel relieved that now, when everyone forgot about the invasion of his home country, his readers don't see The Joke as a political novel, but simply as a novel.

Indeed, some of the reviewers on this site needed to mention that "one does not have to have a particular political interest to enjoy this book", "The Joke is, frankly, not very political" and I simply wonder why such a fear of the political. No doubt, Kundera is way beyond a simple journalist describing life behind the Iron curtain. But why would a romance or science fiction novel or even a "just novel" be better than a political one?

Take the political out of The Joke and we're left with an absurd novel. An unexplainable and ridiculous trouble over a post card, the hard life of a worker in the coal mines, where he has to stay for unclear reasons, a "stupid" young lady who doesn't seem to understand a man's idea of love and an equally stupid hateful sex affair which pushes another na?ve woman to suicide. Young, modern Miss Brozova, to whom Zemanek's and Ludvik's past were equally blameable, aberrant and indifferent, was thinking the same way.

I have asked someone about the movie made after The Unbearable lightness of being and all I heard was some vague memory of a few hot sex scenes. I have the feeling that both books are reduced to that in the view of many readers and it's a pity. If this is what we are looking for, I would recommend Pascal Bruckner - Bitter Moon: it's brilliant and no trace of politics mixed with sex.

The Joke is a masterpiece which combines them. And the postcard is only a minor but well chosen example of the many possible "jokes" of a regime. Kostka, the religious, didn't have to be caught with any postcards to get in trouble and his life is not any less a bitter joke. He tried, humble, the impossible reconciliation of his belief in God with the communist fatalities and still lost. Jaroslav, the folklore lover, tried a similar adaptation and ended up in an ambulance. Their lives, the romance, the sex, are all influenced by political circumstances, more or less directly. Which is why it's simplistic to judge them or Ludvik for his hate, need for revenge and incapability to forget, or the whole situation as a result of a badly misunderstood joke on a postcard. Isn't it why we love Kundera? Because he explains it so well and encourages us not to be simplistic?

Some said they found in the book many problems any of us can have at some point in life. Since the "some" come mainly from a democratic USA, I have serious doubts. And serious hopes that no one will ever have such problems. Unless, of course, we are talking about girls refusing to sleep with guys, the masks and stupidities of young age, rape, hate, revenge - all of them thought taken out of context, and which may indeed (and unfortunately) happen anywhere and to anyone. Actually, let's get rid of this low infatuation with ourselves which tells us to like a book only because "we find ourselves in it"; we do that enough in relationships all the time.

I really don't mean to give definitions and put The Joke in a literary category/genre etc, I even understand why Kundera had enough of his novel being considered political. I just don't think the other extreme is better; it would mean not only deleting pages and pages of the book, but also neglecting a big idea which makes the novel a believable, explainable and logical whole.

In conclusion, it's a rather simple (as in classic, not simplistic) novel (comparing to say, Immortality), yes it is not ONLY political, but lets not cheapen it by recommending it to Harry Potter fans.

Is it "arrogant meanspiritedness", "authorial gracelessness",and "publishing astigmatism" to ask for a reasonable and honest translation? To ask that a translator save his "creative" flights for his own works? I say it is not. I say readers are more likely to be offended at and have a right to be offended at an unfaithful translation (as well as at the Kirkus review above). This is a brilliant book well worth the care Milan Kundera took with it, well worth the care Milan Kundera took with its re-translation.

Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.

In the very first part of The Joke, Kundera begins setting up character types using contrasting religious affiliations. Kostka is the most obvious and continuous religious reference. He not only adheres to Christianity, but to Communism as well. He achieves this contradictory blend of beliefs through a process of rationalization in which everything relates back to God's greater design. Kostka rationalizes most things in his life and in the world around him as God's will. Unable to come to grips with his own image as a seducer, he conveniently clings to the religious notions of martyrship and absolution for sin. While unknowingly adhering to rational thought, Kostka criticizes rationalism as the corrosive force of both Christianity and Communism throughout history. In his final segment, Kostka's false piety is revealed as he suddenly doubts his faith in God and calls out in futility.

In this crowning moment of Kostka's development, Kundera is clearly having the last laugh. He seems to be telling us that it is not so easy and obvious to find God. Kostka is definitely not the image of harmony his name would imply, and, like everyone else, Kostka must struggle to find faith, salvation and comfort. Ludvik's later description of Kostka only confirms this interpretation and Kostka's character, with his dual beliefs, also serves as a platform for Kundera to criticize socialism and its hypocrisy.

The character of Jaroslav allows Kundera to express ideas much closer to his heart. Jaroslav's notions about fantasy are centered around an ancient belief common to many faiths that the most holy and true things are the oldest things. Jaroslav believes in archaic bad omens and also in Kismet. His love of illogical folk music, whose rhythm cannot be written down in our notation system is mirrored in Kundera's comments about rhythm in The Art of the Novel. Jaroslav, with his strong feelings for the past, struggles to live in the modern world of his wife and son, because, to him, it is a world devoid of meaning. The Ride of the Kings is his bridge between the two worlds, and when Vladimir blatantly rejects being the King, Jaroslav's fantasy world begins to fall apart.

At the same time, Ludvik suddenly beings to change places with Jaroslav. In true mystical Kundera form, Ludvik arrives at his changed state through some inexplicable revelation. From his irrational babbling, Ludvik ultimately arrives at a new faith that renounces the false faith of believing in eternal memory and redressibility and perceives the meaning of life as existing only in the moment. Living in the present, Ludvik is finally able to let go of his past and desire for revenge and find peace with himself.

The imagery surrounding the character of Lucie is highly mystical. While not a strong character, Lucie is a stark contrast to Helena, Kundera's ultimate joke and most biting object of satire. Along with all of the magical reference to her, Lucie's life is much like that of the traditional mystic. She is isolated, anti-social and does not communicate through normal means, yet she is somehow a representation of ultimate truth. In reality, Lucie's image carries more mystical qualities than her actual situation. This idea of image is one of Kundera's key concepts.

Rich in absurdity and reproach for hollow, hypocritical guises of faith, The Joke shows us that Kundera values a more intimate, abstract and individual form of faith as an avenue of meaning over the more formal, institutionalized religions created by man, which are often highly lacking in meaning.

This was my first experience of a Kundera novel, and I now find myself in awe of this brilliant writer. This cleverly constructed book unfolds gently and gradually to reveal the complexities of the characters involved, all of whom appear to be victims of circumstance. It explores the natural human desire for freedom, happiness, love and mutual understanding. Although the environment may in part stunt these potentials, it is mostly a person's own inner turmoils and imagination that destroys their ability to find happiness. At times I shed tears at the tragedy of the human condition, but also at the sheer eloquence and profundity of Kundera's thoughts. The main characters, whether male or female, are narrated in the first person, which reveals the author's great capacity for empathy, and writing skill in making these transitions believable. Surprisingly, there is often a delightful, underlying humour within the tragedy, perhaps a little like life itself.

I loved this book from beginning to end. It's easy to forget that it takes place in Czechoslovakia in the 1960's, but why would you want to? That's what drives the story. I love the way Kundera weaves this story, giving the book no single narrator instead he lets the events unfold through several different characters. I got inside this book and it took some much emotionally for me to read it, but loved the ride. This is a GREAT book that I would recommend to anyone!!

I see that lots of readers have commented on Kundera's ego.

Who cares? I enjoyed the story and that's what counts isn't it? One thing that I can say about Kundera's books is that if I were to see one of his characters on the street, I'd be able to identify him. The people in his books are very complex. Like us. He creates human characters with contradictions, strengths and weaknesses. I love to read about what motivates them and why.

What causes me to really enjoy his novels is Kundera's insight. I think that many readers will find some of their own characteristics in his writings. The Joke is no different. If you're a Kundera fan, I think you'll enjoy yourself. And if you've never read Kundera before, this is a good novel to start with!

"Optimism is the opium of the people A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity. Long live Trotsky!" This is the joke, sent on a postcard for all the nosy official world to see, made by Ludvik Jahn when he was a promising student and a leader of the University's Communist youth group. Its flippancy is a product of his desire to amuse himself by discomfiting Marketa, a serious and gullible young woman on whom he has set his romantic and erotic sights; the postcard is part of his strategy as a would-be lover. The powers that be do not see the humor in his joke, but rather a fatal character flaw with treacherous implications. (Perhaps they were more insightful than they knew - their response recalls Nietzsche's observation that a "joke is an epitaph on the death of a feeling", in this case an emotional commitment to an ideal that can never be a joking matter to its adherents.) This results in a judgment which brings him so low that it takes him years to recover from its aftermath: expulsion from the university and the Party, forced service in an army "work battalion" in the mines, followed by three additional years as a civilian miner - which adds up to half a dozen years of self-doubt and psychological isolation, its pain made more acute by a consciousness of his lost privileges and debased social status. He comes to see his sentencing by a gathering of fellow students as emblematic of humanity's failings as a whole -- people in groups act as a compliant and sometimes violent herd out of envy, fear, or an unfounded moral superiority based on misunderstandings of their own personal myths or the myths of a society that is deceiving itself; and, needless to say, many of the upholders of public morality are merely careerists and opportunists. In any event humans are untrustworthy in situations that demand honest thought and fair judgment, implying to Ludvik that he would have raised his own hand to condemn another man had the tables been turned. While Ludvik eventually recovers a decent position in society and a kind of toughened mental equilibrium, he struggles with his misanthropy and a desire for retribution (but he retains his ironical sense of humor, which takes a dark, absurdist twist that matches the events in his life).

In its structure "The Joke" is a polyphonic song of lament, recited by people about events from their shared pasts -- the national, collective past of the undiscriminating enthusiasm of youthful ideologues for the new Communist state of 1948; and the particular pasts of Ludvik, two of his old friends (Jaroslav and Kostka), the wife (Helena) of his youthful persecutor (Zemanek), and a strange, damaged woman from his period of societal punishment (Lucie). In the "musicological chapter" we hear Jaroslav's observations about the nature of Moravian folk music, accompanied by bars of musical notation. These illustrate an ancient mode of singing, in which each voice "personalizes" a song by singing in odd keys and awkward, shifting rhythms, as do the voices of lament in "The Joke" (the reader who knows little or nothing of the technical side of music and its notation still gets an interesting historical survey of a millennium's worth of folk-music and its relationship to both older and newer styles of music). Each voice tells part of the story of interlocking lives. The forlorn Lucie is the one person who is not a subject and remains an object throughout, so two versions of her story are told by Ludvik and by Kostka as part of their own stories. Each voice has a different purchase on reality and is driven by a different myth of the self and of things larger than the self, constructs by which individuals justify their actions. In Ludvik's and Helena's cases this exterior justification is their early allegiance to the ideals of socialism, in Jaroslav's his idolization of folk-art as a panacea for all of the woes of modern life, and in Kostka's a commitment to a highly personal Christian God. In each case there are moments when the individual despairs and believes that his "cause" may be nothing but a delusion or a means of avoiding personal responsibility for his own life.

Based on a chance encounter, Ludvik targets Helena in order to revenge himself against her husband, considering her sexual conquest and the cynical manipulation of her emotions to be an exquisite (and, in its details, sadistic) "joke" which will finally satisfy his cravings for revenge. But he sadly discovers that he wounds the wrong person and that even his real target, Zemanek, is no longer the man he once was; now the joke is on Ludvik, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. The "polyphonic" fragments of three voices accelerate their tempo in the last chapter, and there is a harmonic resolution of sorts - Ludvik "returns home", as it were, and reconciles with the friend of his youth, Jaroslav, whom he has hitherto identified with the stupidity and smugness of small home-town virtues which he fled long ago. (One of the many ironies in the book is that it was Ludvik who convinced the resistant Jaroslav to become an ardent Communist, and Jaroslav does so because the new State is a sponsor of all the folk arts. A parallel irony is that Kostka, the pious Christian, approves of the Party's expulsion of Ludvik, because he understands the Party as a faith, and no faith can tolerate corrosive skepticism.) In the end it is not clear how or if any of the damaged characters will move forward in their lives; much of the damage has been self-inflicted and based on illusions, which only makes it worse.

There are elements of an authorial self-portrait here, as one might expect from a first novel. To begin with the obvious, Ludvik is Kundera's age and has passed through the same national history and a similar personal history (as a student Kundera was expelled from the Party in 1950 for six years; readmitted, he was expelled again in 1970). Furthermore, Ludvik's and Jaroslav's characters contain something of Kundera's own early musical training. More autobiographically telling are the oblique references to Kundera's long poem celebrating Julius Fucik, a work which fit well with the regime's peculiar and intense cult of Fucik as an exemplary national hero of the resistance against the Germans during the Protectorate and a model for Communist youth, who are to be elevated and instructed by Fucik's "Reportage: Notes from the Gallows". On this note (poetry and Kundera's evaluation of it), the highlighted term "the lyrical age", a recurring idea in his work, makes its appearance. This phrase, which Kundera uses critically and almost with contempt or perhaps contempt mixed with regret, is meant to stand for each man's period of immaturity, in which he assumes postures and attitudes to impress the world, while all the time he is in a state of inner confusion and uncertainty about how to behave as an adult. The lyrical age is the age of imposture and narcissism. And the term has a double meaning, referring not only to individual psychology, but to the psychology of an era, specifically the years following the Communist take-over of the state in 1948. This was the lyrical age of Czechoslovakian Communism, which happened to coincide with the last vicious burst of Stalinism; it should be remembered that the participants in the Stalinist drama were motivated as much by a "collective joy" associated with the "construction of socialism and the new man and the new woman" as they were by fear of political trials and the penal system. In Kundera's case this was a period when he wrote lyrical poetry imbued with these political attitudes, especially his poem idealizing Fucik. Kundera obviously rues this phase of his own youth and, now a master of prose, gives us an unflattering alternative reading of Fucik's life. In this sense "The Joke" is an attempt to redress the excesses and impostures of Kundera's own youth.

(If the reader wishes to explore what Kundera means by "the lyrical age" -- and he means a great deal by it; it is something like a ramifying leitmotif in his work -- he can find more details in the author's own words in Kundera's "The Art of the Novel" and in an interview published in Antonin J. Liehm's "The Politics of Culture". The idea is also examined by Peter Steiner in his book "The Deserts of Bohemia". In his essay on the Slansky show-trial Steiner also supplies information that, for non-Czech readers, illuminates the pathetic character Alexej in "The Joke", who could well be based on Ludvik Frejka's son. Frejka was a former high-ranking economics official who was condemned to death for espionage and sabotage in this parody of a trial in 1952. And Frejka's son Tomas vilified him in the pages of the Party paper, "Rude Pravo" -- like Alexej, who bears a burden of socialist shame over his deposed father and writes a public letter denouncing him.)

Although it contains satirical elements (its portraits of Zemanek and Helena, its depiction of authority figures in the army), it would be a mistake to call "The Joke" a work of satire. Kundera considers his novels to be primarily what might be called "existential meditations". Much of the meditation is on people in a situation which is characterized by the inevitability of extreme politics as a background condition which permeates everything, including all human relations. This particular situation appears almost inescapable to Czechs (and Slovaks), especially to Czech writers during the period from 1938 to 1990. The dates of the book's composition and publication (1967) are very important in assessing Kundera's relationship with other writers and intellectuals who participated in the Prague Spring (1968) and were hammered down in various ways after the failure of the movement to establish "socialism with a human face." Kundera, like Ludvik, was still arguing for the maintenance of a reformed Communist state which would rationally carry out social and economic programs while allowing individuals civil liberties - this proved to be a pipe-dream. His recognition of the unviability of this idea is indicated by his self-exile to France in 1975. Another disturbing meditation, central to Kundera's way of thinking, is on the fluidity and "lightness" of the self, represented here by the masked alterations of identity that take place in the Moravian ritual "Ride of the Kings". The dissolving self is a subject fit for its own essay; and a subject notably treated by Karel Capek in his trilogy "Three Novels".

Now to the most important matter, the literary qualities of the work. Kundera is a thoroughly professional writer with literary goals and standards that he has set for himself (again, these are explicitly stated in "The Art of the Novel"). Since he has chosen to tell his story - or construct his existential meditation -- through the minds and words of four different characters, how well has he established the individuality of their voices? It can be said that three of the voices - Helen's, Jaroslav's and Kostka's - have something in common. Each of these characters is arguing with himself or herself within a system of ideas that is almost axiomatic, and they take their arguments to a logical extreme. At the same time they are questioning their relationship with their most cherished idea in order to evaluate the worthiness of their own lives (i.e., "Have I chosen to live a certain way correctly, or even wisely?"). Helen's choice is for the Party and its notion of society, even to the extent that her first love and marriage were based on their acceptability within this framework. Jaroslav's is for folk-art, based on a belief that it will save him (and others) by reconnecting them with a long and diffuse group identity (the village; the nation; the culture). Kostka's commitment is to God, apprehended through a highly personalized form of Christianity. Each believes he or she will be saved by his adherence to the chosen ideal. Ludvik, however, has fallen from grace, and, with that, from certainty; he no longer believes in belief, in the notion that such broader commitments are necessary or desirable, because they are a reservoir of self-deceit and self-justification rather than ideas which can withstand rigorous criticism. And so his voice stands out from each of the others, although it can be pointed out that he too becomes obsessive in the pursuit of revenge - his "myth" is purely personal, and it has been thoroughly formed and deformed by politics.

On a final note, the present reviewer's reading is based on the Faber and Faber edition of 2000, which is the only English edition that is "fully authorized and approved" by Kundera. In this edition's "Afterword" Kundera explains both the sources of the work's translation (Michael Henry Heim, other translators, and one key editor are involved) and the reasons why he felt the earlier four translations were unworthy or absolutely misleading. Don't skip the Afterword, since it is a miniature essay on the art of translation itself (and, in an oddly ironical way, a commentary on the "bad joke" which Kundera feels the English-language publishing industry has played on him, especially with this work). While in comparison to numerous other good novels this book merits five stars, I give it four because there are other novels by Kundera which I esteem more highly.

Milan Kundera is smart, perceptive, and a brilliant writer. Unfortunately, he knows it. He gets caught up in his idea of the novel and refuses to abide by the techniques of suspense and narrative. But there's a *reason* those techniques are the norm - they're tried and true. They *work*. Kundera jettisoned those techniques in later works, putting the "climax" of his novels in awkward places. The results, in my opinion, were very good novels, not great ones.

The Joke is Kundera's first novel, and his current style of writing will not fully appear for another decade. This definitive fifth edition is, I believe, the best of Kundera's works (and to an extent leaves me wishing he didn't abandon what worked so well right here).

The first thing you notice about this brilliant novel is the narration. It switches narrators repeatedly (a technique that Kundera cannot use today because he puts himself into his novels as the first person writer/narrator). The idea is that events in real life do not come to us fully formed - we hear one point of view, and another, and another, and it is up to us to unravel the various stories to find out what "really" happened. As everyone knows, one person's point of view will never be the same as another's. The Joke's genius lies in its unabashedly saying exactly that.

By the seventh and final part, the point of view is switching rapidly from character to character. What is only slightly meaningful to one character brings another to the point of suicide. The final chapter is brilliantly lyrical - it reads like poetry and not like overblown purple prose (an aside - Kundera's greatest strength may be that he *never* writes purple prose; some may call him arrogant, but he's not pompous, and there's a difference).

The Joke is, frankly, not very political (it is certainly less political than, say, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which itself was mostly apolitical). Nor is it a period piece, as the (pompous *and* arrogant) literary critic Harold Bloom says. It is both ambitious and well-executed, both perceptive and melancholy. Kundera's books are barely recognizably in his first novel - and that may be good or bad, depending on your point of view.

Put it this way - I would recommend The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality to everyone who loves to read, think, and most of all, test his or her mind. I would recommend The Joke, however, to *everyone*, whether they think that Catch-22 was drearily boring (c'mon, it's *funny*) or that The Lord of the Rings is the greatest book ever written (Harry Potter is better, and you know it! ;) ). More than anything, it answers the question, "What if history plays jokes?" The answer doesn't bode too well for all of us.